I am about to update on Space Fellowship all the work we have done over the last few years. The launch site the tracking and telemetry systems the live video feeds and the guidance stuff using the cold gas thrusters and how to do all the legal stuff. I still have a few problems to solve but not many! I still need to solve the GPS issues WITHOUT buying the super expensive military units (which you can) but some of the new open source GPS modules are just about to solve this. The problem we really have is NOT the COCOM limits really it's the acceleration problem. If you exceed 4 G's with most GPS modules you will loose lock. The problem is with the bandwith of the input signal and how the software works with it. What we need is to open up that bandwith just a little and some of these open source GPS modules will allow us to do that. It takes a lot of time to work out issues in an affordable manner and so far it's only been 5 years I've been working on these major issues. GPS alone is not enough for guidance as it is not reliable enough so what we have developed is a transmitter and receiver system that can give the important velocity vector without the need for GPS. Tracking is another big issue and no one solution alone can handle that satisfactorily so we got to working with Optictracker and now we can track optically to very long ranges the optic tracker is tied into GPS to help keep a lock on the target if we loose optic track it hunts for the target and will reacquire automatically. The third Prong for tracking is RSSI and for that we need a 5 helical array and that is the final thing we are still working on to finish a complete reliable solution for it. Tracking is the single most important issue IMO because I believe you need live telemetry 100% of the time and a live link with the spacecraft to allow manual control (ground control automated) if necessary. You also need a 100% signal to abort a mission if need be. This way if you loose telemetry for a determined amount of time the system will automatically abort. (self destruct) Without these safety measures your not going to get FAA/AST clearance so all your hard work is for nothing if you don't do this first! Doing this with amateur equipment has been most of the challenge and to maintain a 100% lock with this equipment requires awesome tracking. I have the hardware for the cold gas system that is another requirement as your not under power from your gimbaled rocket all the time. We have worked out a solution there and what's left to do is finish off the programming for the guidance system in that respect it is mostly done already but the final tie in is not complete. Another person would be able to do this pretty quickly but I have not found that person so this winter I am going to wear another hat and that hat is the final hat I need to acquire is programming. So depending on how fast I can catch on I may be able to solve this this winter fix the cold gas and the RSSI software and patch the GPS bandwith problem. There is still work to be done but these last few years have brought us a lot closer. You have to realize all I do every day is work on these issues Team Prometheus is my day job. The really cool stuff started happening when I was able to tie our hardware into X-Plane and FlightGear and run simulations of complete sub orbital and orbital missions in real time with real hardware in the loop. Anyway I can't put all the stuff in one post but I'm going to get this all down here pretty soon so anyone that wants to can do all these things much cheaper than you could imagine!

So just because I don't do a lot of flights doesn't mean anything at all because the really good stuff is a whole bunch harder than flying a rocket! That's the easy part! lol Unlike other teams we are solving the REALLY hard issues required to do real space exploration and we ARE NOT just talking about it. I'll start updating soon.

Rob Right now I'm restructuring the team as we have collected a good bunch but the organization end needs to come together a bit better. It doesn't really matter as always I'll keep pushing but right now it looks pretty good. The best thing we have going right now is my wife Raychell she is the perfect back to my front. I could not have found a better match in all the world. I don't think there's really any way we could fail now it's just a matter of time.

So yeah back on topic There is testing going on right now of the Condor there is a lot more to a real spaceplane than meets the eye. I have to build a model for X-Plane now that we have decided on the airframe and I have a lot of work to do before the next round of drops and flight test.

So to be safe for once and not push our effort I'll say spring before anything really cool happens as far as 100kft drop test under power.

It will honestly take a year to get clearance from the FAA to do the sub orbital flight and in reality I'll have to say SUMMER 2015 is a pretty damn good bet.

We had to acquire an 80qt mixer and the AP required for the propellant. So we got some help from other interest to say the least it was not something we could afford on our own. But! Now we can make all the propellant we need. The only catch right now is I can't reveal the gimbal we used on the booster yet.

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post._________________Today's the day! We go into Space!

When we succeed at this it will make it a bunch cheaper to get to space on a small scale. It cost us plenty but the final system will be usable for small teams. I think many small teams making space shots is a good thing.Yes the payloads are small but who cares? Before this there was no payloads at all! Besides that the electronics are now small enough to do a good deal of exploration today with small payloads.

I must tell you getting your own video and running your own ground control and tracking station is for sure great fun!

Just want to chime in a bit - the Prometheus list serve is currently the most active I've seen it in at least a year. The merger with Project Condor has created some real momentum. It remains to be seen how difficult it will be to turn momentum into finished product, but the goals are realistic and there are people other than Monroe making significant contributions.

I sympathize with the desire for video and data from the real missions - I've seen some of the photos from the 100kft FPV mission using the new groundstation, but the video has still remained elusive.